Australia offers aid on joined twins

Australian doctors have offered to help separate conjoined twins who were born in the remote highlands of Papua New Guinea last week.

The girls, delivered by Caesarean section in Mount Hagen hospital, are joined at the abdomen but have separate brains, lungs, hearts and genitalia.

The PNG twins were delivered in the same week as doctors in the United States were separating two-year-old Egyptian twins Ahmed and Mohamed Ibrahim, who were joined at the crowns of their heads.

A PNG charity told local media that the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne had expressed interest in helping to separate the PNG girls.

The offer of help came from Melbourne surgeon Dr Alex Auldist, who successfully separated twins from the PNG island of Bougainville in 1996.

Authorities at the Mount Hagen hospital - which lacks specialist expertise, drugs and equipment - are now searching for sponsors to send the twins to Australia.

Mount Hagen doctor James Yabora said he believed the babies would survive if given the proper care. However, he warned that one of the babies had a weak heart, which was located abnormally on the right side of the body.

The babies, who have temporarily been named Twin 1 and Twin 2, were being administered intravenous fluids, antibiotics and oxygen in the warm nursery of the Mount Hagen hospital.